ProfessorThomas Maschmeyer

Thomas Maschmeyer AO PhD HonDSc FAA FTSE MAE FRACI FRSN is Professor of Chemistry at the University of Sydney, serves as Founding Director of the Laboratory of Advanced Catalysis for Sustainability (School of Chemistry) and is Director of Gelion plc (listed on the London Stock Exchange’s AIM in November 2021) and Founder of its 100% owned subsidiary Gelion Technologies (est. 2015). For three years (2015 – 2017) he also served as Founding Director of the University’s A$150m Australian Institute of Nanoscale Science and Technology (now “Sydney Nano”).

Awarded the Eureka Prize for Societal Impact in Science (2025) and made Officer of the Order of Australia in 2024. In 2021 he was awarded one of the international Falling Walls Prizes for Engineering and Technology Breakthrough of the Year in Berlin and the David Craig Medal and Lecture (the Australian Academy of Science’s chemistry career award). In 2020 he received the Prime Minister’s Prize for Innovation (the nation’s top innovation award) as well as the Australian Financial Review Sustainability Prize. He was also named as one of the top ten international People of the year: who mattered in higher education in 2020 by Times Higher Education and ranks as #15 in the world’s Top Influential Chemists 2010 – 2020 (AcademicInfluence.com).

In 2019 he received an Honorary Doctorate from the Universities of Ca’Foscari Venice and Trieste in recognition of his scientific and societal contributions in chemistry. In 2014 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of NSW (RSN), Australia’s oldest scientific society. In 2011 he was elected the then youngest Foreign Member of the Academia Europea (AE), as well as Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (AAS), the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE) and the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (RACI).

He is co-founder and Principal Technology Advisor of the plastic and biomass waste upcycling company Licella Holdings (2007) and its UK-based joint venture partner MURA Technology (2016, ~A$1bn based on its latest private equity funding round), which operate in North America, Europe and Australasia, involving partners such as Dow, Shell, LG Chem, Chevron Phillips, Mitsubishi, Canfor and KBR. He is also one of the three founding Professors of Avantium (2001), a Dutch high-tech company (listed 2017 on the Euronext Exchange in both Amsterdam and Brussels).

He served/serves on the editorial/advisory boards of ten international journals and was member of the external advisory boards of the State Key Laboratory for Catalysis, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (2014–18), and the Cardiff Catalysis Institute (2015–19); he has been President of the Catalysis Society of Australia (2008–14).

Further awards include: Distinguished Contribution to Economic Development Award from the Federation of Asian Chemical Societies (2019); the CSIRO Eureka Prize for Leadership in Innovation and Science (Australia’s ‘Science Oscar’, 2018); the RACI R.K. Murphy Medal for Industrial Chemistry (2018); the NSW Science and Engineering Award for Renewable Energy Innovation (2013); the RACI Weickhardt Medal for Economic Contributions Through Chemistry (2012); the RACI Applied Research Award (2011); the Le Fèvre Prize of the AAS for Outstanding Basic Research in Chemistry by a Scientist Under 40 (2007).

After completing his PhD in 1994 he worked with Prof. Sir John M. Thomas at the Royal Institution of Great Britain as Australian Bicentennial Fellow and became the Assistant Director of the Davy Faraday Laboratories there in 1996, concurrently holding a personal Marie Curie Fellowship at the University of Cambridge (Prof. BFG Johnson), and was Senior Research Associate at Peterhouse (Cambridge’s Founding College). In 1998 he was appointed Professor and Head of Department of Applied Organic and Catalytic Chemistry at the Delft Institute of Chemical Technology, becoming Vice-Chairman of that Institute in 2000. He returned in late 2003 to the University of Sydney as ARC Federation Fellow.

Publication Record: +350 publications, including 31 patents/patent applications and 23 book chapters, resulting in > 19,000 citations, H-Index 73 (Google Scholar) and >14,800 citations, H-Index 63 (ISI WoS).